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Careless Staffers Biggest Data Threat
David Utter
Staff Writer
2006-06-29
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
Those underpaid employees or indifferent consultants can do a lot of harm to a business by failing to secure sensitive data.
Worries about a James Bond-themed villain sending some skillful minion to loot a company of its data should be restricted to the cinema. The real potential for a security breach exposing sensitive information really comes from the employee who skipped work to see the latest Bond flick at the theater anyway.
A survey by Palisade Systems reported on ConsumerAffairs.com said that of the 126 companies it questioned, over 54 percent blamed a reported data loss or security breach on employee error.
The companies all had reported thefts or breaches to the nonprofit Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in the past year. Malicious crackers or other intrusion attempts caused about 34 percent of the problems reported.
"All of sudden, employers are realizing that the biggest security threat they face to the sensitive data they are storing and/or sending is now coming from employees who can't get caught by the millions of dollars of security technology designed to prevent the bad guys from getting in," Palisade Systems founder Dr. Doug Jacobsen said in the report.
The federal government has figured in a number of data losses that originated from employees having control of data or laptops that should have been secured more stringently. The IRS, FTC, and the Department for Veterans Affairs all experienced data losses stemming from poor control of the data by the employee.
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Tag: Data Security
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About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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